A Saying for The Ages
by FBIEpidemic
Summary: An intern, a heart attack, parents, and that weird uncle... it's a story set up to fail and remind us of those who have poured their hearts and souls into making us... us


**I have been struggling to write this for what feels like a year but I watched a few Grey's Anatomy episodes, took a few lessons from House, and rewatched a few key Suits moments and here we have the spawn of three very good shows. Mind you, I'm studying to be a psychologist so my actual medical knowledge is limited… doesn't help that I'm only a junior in high school. From what my own education and Google can tell me this is correct… so let's hope no actual doctors read this.**

Medicine is one of the most unclean professions. There is a black and there is a white but most of the time one must work in the grey. Because being a doctor is not a guarantee to save but a threat to kill.

"Fifty year old white male complaining of chest pains, unconscious on arrival."

Working the ER means that face-to-face interactions are reserved for people who are conscious, unfortunately that does not mean the ones who are already half out of it and delirious. "Collect a personal history."

Cancer is no longer as clean as she saw it in the movies. People can break and when they do… it's not uplifting or a story to retell. No, it's something that haunts you in the middle of the night and triggers you as you throw the trash out.

Car crashes aren't just for drunks their everyone and anyone. Most often, they're for kids who haven't gotten a start at anything.

"I've got V-fib on the monitor."

Everything in a hospital has to be spoken and understood or… whatever.

"Start compressions," given the fact that she's still an intern it should be her climbing up the gurney and attempt to restart this man's heart. Lucky for her, cardio is what she hopes to specialise in and Dr. Oak has put her incharge for the hour. It's a test run, something that her chief believes in, and if she passes she's looking at a very good time at this hospital.

The only thing is, this is New York and there has only been about three people to ever 'pass' the ER challenge.

"I've got tachycardia on the monitor."

She watches for a moment, counting and looking at the QRST wave. "Give him .3 mg of adrenaline and get the paddles."

The nurse, a male no older than her, gives her a skeptical look put pushes the line through, stepping aside as she takes the paddles. "That is hardly the amount of adrenaline in an epipen!"

She stands over the man, his face covered by the bag pumping oxygen into his lungs, and watches the monitor waiting for the right moment. "I know what- charge the paddles." She ignores the nurse's doubt for now, no doubt she'll have to explain herself to Oak in a few minutes anyways.

"Clear!" The man's shaved chest lifts off of the table, she misses scar on his clavicle, and he lands heavily back on to the gurney. The nurse at his head jumps right back to bagging him, pushing air down his tubbed throat.

"I've got sinus rhythm." She hands the paddles back and pulls out her stethoscope, checking for herself. "Get him-"

"-on a drip of Beta blockers. I'll be back in a moment to discuss pain management." Oak stands at the door of the room and scowls at her. "Ross, get your ass out here."

She wraps her stethoscope around her neck and follows Oak, already accepting the shouting he's about to do.

"How did you know?" Oak is known around the hospital for being a dick. He was a drill sergeant in the army until he was deployed for active duty where he was then made his team medic. His stubble and bright green eyes are often enough to make any man burst into tears. She's not afraid of him though.

When you're raised by two middle aged lawyers you learn to read people and Oak may look like a cold hearted bastard, and usually acts like one too, but he's a lot like Harvey.

"I-I… There was vomit on the paramedics shoes and on his shirt. Uhm, his hands were shaking and-and he had cold sweats. They were just signs of the too much adrenaline, sir." She holds the instrument around her neck tightly, hoping to ease some of her own adrenaline.

"How did you know those weren't symptoms of the tachycardia?" He challenges, hands on his hips.

She opens her mouth and shrugs," how was I to know that the tachycardia wasn't it's own symptom?"

Oak sighs, and she knows that was the right answer, but he still shakes his head. "You were right to think that it was a symptom of the adrenaline." His eyes harden," but you aren't a diagnosistition. You're a surgeon." He sighs again, something that she notices he does a lot for someone who acts like he doesn't care about a single one of his students. "You did good but…" his eyes wander over her shoulder. "Please, tell me that the couple in the waiting room have no relation to you and that Ross is just a very common last name in New York."

She glances over and there stands her father, his back is turned to her and he seems to freaking out much to her mother's distaste. "Shit."

Oak nods," yeah, shit. Get out of here, you're done for the day." He nods her away," keep out of the way of the staff, ya' here? You don't want to piss me off right after you got into my good graces."

She smiles at that last line, she passed.

"Dad?"

He turns around, almost tripping over his own feet as he does so. "Paisley!" Men like Mike Ross are their own breed. They're not like Harvey Specter, reclusive and emotionless, they're criers and, God knows, their huggers.

Her parents invelop her in a hug and she feels only an ounce of panic because Oak could still be right behind her. She swallows it, he has to have some kind of family. He's a Harvey, he's probably accidently picked them up along the way too.

"What're you doing here?" She feels a wave of self consciousness sweep over her, she has to stink. She's been working the ER for 34 hours and hasn't showered yet. Not to mention the hospital smell.

Mike scrubs under his eyes, attempting to pull himself together for his daughter," Harvey had a heart attack."

Flashes of pale skin pass before her eyes. Spilled black ink on the inside of his right hand from the pens that have been broken for the last seven years but he's too stubborn to get rid of. The pale scar on his clavicle from falling off a ladder when she was twelve, turns out her favorite book was worth one broken bone. The green and red bracelet she made him for Christmas when she was five that he still wears regardless of it's ridiculous size because she underestimated the size of his hand, had to make him a new one and then drastically overestimated it. They were all there. All subtle hints that the man she just saved was also the man who taught her how to play chopsticks on the piano and how to make chocolate chip cookies like his mother used to.

"T-That was Harvey," it isn't a question because she doesn't need either of them to tell her that it was him, she knows it was. She just watched nurses cut his clothes off of him. Watched as his heart stopped working and a colleague had to shove a tube down his throat to make sure his brain didn't not starve without oxygen. She had held his life in her hands and she almost dropped it. She almost misdiagnosed. "He-He didn't even look like himself… I didn't...He wasn't…"

There he is again with another reassuring hug. Her father has always been good with those. He can offer impeccable reasoning to any problem she may have but in the end, the thing he does better than everyone else is hug.

"We came in with him, Paisley. A nurse told us that he's already being set up-"

"In the cardiac unit," Paisley nods, understanding what her mother was going to say before the words left her mouth. "We can go up there."

Paisley Ross looks exceptionally like her mother, all but the icey blue eyes of her father. Those were a gift as far as anyone could tell because her looking like Rachel gave Harvey the best one liners. She looks like her mother and spits fire like her father and Harvey. She's a mess… it's exactly how she got through Med School.

You can't be raised by three lawyers and expect anything different.

"Doctor Oak has him on Beta Blockers those will correct his blood pressure. It'll also improve his lung functions and-and," Paisley motions to the mask covering Harvey's face," we'll be able to remove the mask."

Mike playfully shoves her shoulder," is that what we paid all that money for? Because if that's what you sound like as a doctor, I'm not sure it was worth it."

Paisley shoves back, far less-hearted, than her father. "It's not the same, Dad. This is Harvey so… So this is exactly why doctors are not allowed to work on family."

Mike takes a step back, hearing the hostility that hides in her voice. "What's wrong? What happened?"

Rachel moves closer, and takes her daughter hand. "Talk to me like one of your professors. Lay it out."

Paisley wrings her hands and glances over at Harvey's prone body. "Harvey Specter was brought into the emergency room at 14 hundred hours experiencing angina pectoris. Emergency personnel identified his symptoms as a heart attack brought on by excessive adrenal secretion. A CT should clear up the threat of a tumor but blood work was still conducted." Paisley bites her lip," Beta blockers will reverse the effects of the hormones and… and he should…"

Rachel takes Paisley's face in her hands and finishes the sentence that her daughter has been incapable of finishing. "He should be fine."

Paisley nods, tears falling down her cheeks. "H-He should be fine."

Mike steps closer to them, putting his own hand over Rachel's. "He will be fine," it's a soft correction. Nothing more.

* * *

"Ace," her name is called softly, his voice muffled by the mask placed over his head hours ago.

She had her face buried in a medical journal, she was reading about alternative gallbladder removal. This could not have been surprising to Harvey, he had known her since she first picked up reading. It had been Mike's fault. The three of them were seating in the living room, Paisley between them as the chewed on her thumb, when Paisley simply leaned over and asked 'what's that word?'. From there, you couldn't pull her away from books and words.

"Harvey!" She throws the magazine to the side, leaving her sandwich forgotten by her left.

He smiles at her, that stupid lopsided cheshire cat smile that has mocked her since she was a day old. "Is a heart attack all it takes, nowadays, to get a kid to come home and see her Uncle?"

She shakes her head and wipes tears away the balls of her fist.

Harvey reaches across and takes her hand. "Keep it together, Ace. I'm not that bad."

Paisley shakes her head and lays it on the bed, squeezing the hand that Harvey held out. "I was in the ER, Harvey. I was in charge." She looks up, tears streaming down her face, and sobs. "I had to put those paddles to your chest. I was the one-was the…"

Harvey wipes away her tears away," you got a pen?"

She nods, a small sad smile playing across her lips. She takes the pen off of her chair and hands it to him. She holds her hand out, already knowing what he's about to do.

He's done this since she was five. It was the first time she was in his office and it was just her and Harvey. She tripped over the carpet and hit her head. A big ugly knot right on her forehead was forming on her head before Harvey could even scoop her up.

He panicked, unsure of what to do until it came to him. He grabbed a pen off of his desk and drew a heart on the flesh in between her thumb and forefinger. " _It's okay, see? You're okay."_ She looked very skeptical of that statement so he drew one of his own hand. " _I'm okay too."_

So it became their thing. When he started having panic attacks, she was the one to weasel her way into his locked room and there she would draw a heart on his hand and whisper the words that he so very much needed to hear. When she started looking into colleges and would fall asleep at her computer she would wake up to a heart on her hand and those words written on her hand. Sometimes even a bagel was waiting for her.

So as they seat in the hospital now, him hooked to machines that she has studied and slaved over, and her still shaking from the fear and repulsion of what she had to do he speaks those words again. He draws a tiny heart on her hand and smiles his carefree uncle smile.

She's ten again, curled up on the couch with him. He's still shaking from a panic attack and her tears are slowly drying off of her face.

Her father is going to jail.

He presses a soft kiss to the crown of her head and uncaps his pen. It's second nature.

He cradles her tiny hand in his and traces the heart over and over until it's perfect.

 _It's okay, see? You're okay. I'm okay._


End file.
